Some Nebraska schools are warming up to online learning on snow days, others sled away

Shanna Armsbury’s house was the place to be when a snow day was called, with hot chocolate and movies, making snow forts, sliding on the icy driveway and going sledding on the huge hill at the middle school near their house in Omaha.

“My son broke his foot going down the hill,” Armsbury said. “It was a lot of fun to watch. It was so much fun because it was such a huge hill, and I was like, ‘Oh no, he's gonna go flying,’ and he went flying. I was laughing so hard until I realized he was hurt, and then we were at the emergency room and he broke his foot.”

Armsbury has eight kids, with two still in school. One of them attends Omaha Public Schools, while the other now goes to private school.

The Omaha district tried using remote learning days in place of snow days for a couple of years, but switched back this school year to just closing.

Armsbury said she was surprised when OPS first decided to use remote learning days on snow days. She thought it could be a great learning experience but said the execution didn’t pan out.

“They would sit in their bed and log on, and then the next thing I know, they would be upstairs getting breakfast and getting things,” Armsbury said. “I'll be like, ‘I thought you were supposed to be at school,’ and they're like, ‘Oh, the teacher let us go. We just had to say that we were there,’ and be marked that they logged on.”

While there isn’t any Nebraska-specific data on how many districts use remote learning for snow days, a 2020 EdWeek Research Center survey reported that nationally, 39% of principals and district leaders had switched to remote learning days, and an additional 32% said they were considering the change.

An OPS spokesperson said the district decided to go back to traditional snow days this school year based on feedback from students, teachers and families.

The snowmageddon of 2024

While Nebraska schools have been able to stockpile their snow days this school year, in January 2024, cities across the state saw anywhere from a few inches to more than 30 inches of snow, according to the data from the NOAA Regional Climate Centers.

Jeremy Christiansen is superintendent for Laurel-Concord-Coleridge School in eastern Nebraska, which saw about 16 inches of snow during that month. He said the snow, cold, wind and snow drifts meant kids were in and out of school for weeks.

“In some cases, with some of the snow situations, you might not have seen a teacher for five or six days,” Christiansen said. “The challenge is that if you're not having some connected interactions, you're not necessarily losing what you've learned, but it's taking time to retrieve prior learning, and then really trying to connect that to making the progress moving forward.”

The district developed a remote learning policy the next month. If the district called a remote learning day, teachers would assign a roughly 10-minute activity per class that students can complete on their own time during the day. Elementary students are only expected to complete activities in English language arts and math.

“The reality is, we know that e-learning, it doesn't replace in-school learning,” Christiansen said. “It's not going to be a typical seven, seven-and-a-half-hour day, but it's that idea of, how do we engage them in some meaningful and relevant learning when they can't be at school for a significant period of time.”

Christiansen said the district hasn’t had to use remote learning days since creating the policy, partly due to mild winters and also because the school still has some snow days built into the calendar. Remote learning days are meant for those winter storms that cause school to be closed for longer stretches of time.

“Part of that is that sense of that experience of having a snow day,” He said. “We have our finger on the pulse of our students and our staff. There's the cultural morale of some things.”

Rocky Robbins, superintendent for Minatare Public Schools about eight miles from Scottsbluff, said the district uses remote learning days on most snow days, unless there’s a blizzard that could cause a power outage or mean that students have bigger concerns than school. Remote learning only applies to those in grades six and above.

“We put all eight classes into a half day, and I think that's been more beneficial for the kids,” Robbins said. “It's helped the teachers as well as far as just having that daily contact and making sure they're making progress with their curriculum.”

Students check in on Zoom, and then log off to work on assignments. Minatare also has the option to switch the school schedule for the week because the district is on a four-day school week. Normally, students may not go to school Friday, but if there is a snowstorm that keeps them out of school for several days, the district can decide to have classes on Friday.

“There's a lot of beauty in it. We have a lot of flexibility on how we meet that requirement,” Robbins said. “Kids and parents are pretty malleable to that type of a situation. It's worked out very well for us, is what I would say.”

Robbins said remote learning days also keep teachers connected with students so they have access to a trusted adult.

“Sometimes in certain situations, that would provide an opportunity for that to run up the chain and to inform the administration about something they might be dealing with at that point, so it's a good thing,” Robbins said. “I don't know academically if it progresses us as far as a regular school day would, but it helps in other ways, too, that probably can't be measured very easily.”

A nice, cold January tan

Tim Rezac, an English teacher at Bishop Neumann in Wahoo, is a fierce protector of snow days. In 2024, a Facebook post about his snow day extra credit went viral with more than 1,000 reactions. He encouraged students to take a picture or video of something they did on their surprise day off, like drawing with their sibling or shoveling their grandparents driveway.

“I had a couple kids, they went out in their shorts, and they put a blanket down on the snow and said, ‘I'm getting working on my tan in January,’ or something like that,” Rezac said. “It was a lot of funny stuff.”

Rezac said he believes adults have overstructured kids' lives with school, homework, sports and clubs.

“We expect so much of them that when they get a chance to have a snow day, we should allow that to be their creative day,” Rezac said.

As an English teacher, Rezac said learning activities like a close reading of a Shakespeare passage aren’t as effective in a remote learning environment.

He’s also concerned that some students may not have the means to connect for an online learning day. Bishop Neumann is not a “one-to-one” school, where every student is provided with a school electronic device. Rezac added that other barriers like WiFi could stop a student from logging on.

“If I've got a student who lives out by Davey or lives 25 miles out in the country, and they've got to get up an hour early because they've got to chop the ice to feed the cows so the cows can drink water, and they've got to go do chores, and then they get inside and they've got sketchy WiFi service — it's just not fair to them,” he said.

LaToya Sherrod, who raises her five kids in Omaha, remembered how hard remote learning was during the COVID-19 pandemic. She said doing remote learning again for snow days would have a financial and emotional impact.

“It is a full-time job trying to get four kids on a tablet, learning, and it's just me,” Sherrod said. “Whereas if they were in school, it would be four separate rooms, multiple instructors, supports and services, and resource and special ed helping. All of those jobs combined into one person plus a toddler at home is insane.”

She said she felt pressure trying to balance work with making sure her kids were online and paying attention.

“I'm also an instructor myself at the college, so I love education. It's important to me,” Sherrod said. “I went to school for this. It is my passion, and I just felt like a failure within myself sometimes. How can I teach people, but I can't even teach my own kids?”

Sherrod’s children are currently enrolled in Westside Community Schools in Omaha. She said on snow days, some of the teachers at Westside will offer optional assignments. Officially, the district does not use remote learning on snow days. A district spokesperson said teachers for older students may reach out on snow days about “extra learning opportunities that are optional, adjusting schedules or reminding students about upcoming due dates.”

Sherrod said she remembers how fun snow days were when she was a kid, including a time she went sledding with her dad and flew through the air.

“I want my kids to have those cool, fun memories of, ‘It's a snow day. This is the day where I get to stay home, have fun, sleep in, go play in the snow, and just have a good time,’” Sherrod said.

Armsbury said that in Omaha Public Schools, even logging on for the two hours on remote learning days took the fun out of snow days for her kids.

“The joy of watching the news and waiting up and all of that kind of went away,” she said. “They dreaded it. They wanted to be able to stay up and do things and watch movies or hang with their friends or talk to their friends or whatever. Knowing that they still had to wake up, not as early, but still early so they could log on and do their thing, they dreaded it.”

While Armsbury said there could be smaller districts where online learning can work, she’s excited for her kids to be able to enjoy a true snow day again.

“Can’t wait,” Armsbury said. “Bring back the snow days.”